Allegro and Sherlock

I've been playing with the new colts quite a bit these past few days. Allegro needed his feet trimmed pretty badly, so I've been working tons with picking up his feet. Today the farrier came and trimmed them. He did really well.

Yesterday Tania came over to meet the boys and took to them right away. She couldn't wait to play with them, so we put a halter on each of them and she took Sherlock while I took Allegro and we started playing some of the 7 games. I've done a bit with each of them, so not all of it was new, but they're still pretty unsure and a bit pushy at times, so it was awesome having Tania give it a go with Sherlock. At one point she was trying to keep him from pushing his shoulder into her and they had a bit of a battle going. Tania won, so Sherlock sulked. He really did! He wouldn't even take a treat from her after that (at least not at first). She also succeeded in teaching him more porcupine and yoyo and a bit of circling.

I've done quite a bit of driving, porcupine and circle with Allegro too. We struggled quite a bit with circling a few days ago, but yesterday when we repeated the exercises, he was much quieter and quicker to catch on (and willing). I love how patient persistence always seems to work!

Today after Allegro got his feet trimmed and after I took my son to gymnastics, I just hung out in the pasture with the colts, brushing them and porcupining them away, occasionally driving them if they got into my space too much. I didn't halter either of them, just let them move around at will. Neither left. In fact they followed me around all over the place, so I decided to put my rubber boots on and see if they'd follow me into the giant puddle at the bottom of the paddock where all the snow was melting. Wouldn't hurt to see if they'd willingly cross water, right?

Well, they followed me down to the edge and watched curiously as my dogs and I waded about. Eventually Allegro got his toes wet, then took another small step and eventually came forward enough to almost get his hind feet in, but not quite. Sherlock just stayed on the edge and watched. It was cool to see how much Allegro wanted to follow me. We walked back out again and tried again a few times, but he didn't get any further than that. Sherlock didn't get more than his toes wet. But I can see tons of confidence and curiousity in Allegro. Sherlock too, but with a dab of willfulness as well! ;-) Could be a lot of fun!